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CU electric crews working courthouse repairs

Posted
Monday, January 8, 2018 10:02 am

By LARRY C. BOWERS

Electric Division crews from Cleveland Utilities have been working closely with Bradley County government personnel and Conley Electric in upgrades of electric service and equipment at the fire-damaged Bradley County Courthouse.

Electric Division Voce President Bart Borden informed the Cleveland Board of Public Utilities in a recent session the work involves the removal of four overhead type of transformers from the electrical room in the basement of the courthouse.

The upgrade will involve the installation of a concrete transformer pad and pad-mounted transformer on the south side of the courthouse.

Conley Electric will be installing new underground conductors to the existing electrical main panels of the courthouse from the new transformer location.

Cleveland Utilities construction crews will replace the 33-year-old underground primary feeding the transformer. This work began in December.

Borden provided updates on several other Electric Division projects. They included:

• The utility's line construction crew has started framing and setting combination transmission and distribution steel and concrete poles for new transmission lines on Harriman Road for the new Spring Branch Industrial Park.

• Construction is continuing on the new Freewill Road overhead line for the annexation of Freewill Road to 22nd Street. This work includes the start of the line on New Murraytown Road.

The 22nd Street line is 2,400 feet in length and the New Murraytown Road line is 750 feet. The new lines will serve a new residential subdivision located on New Murraytown Road, and future annexed properties in the area.

• Work was completed in November on the Randolph Samples Road tie line, and financials are final for the project.

• Favorable weather earlier in the fall allowed the electric installation of the new classroom building at Lake Forrest Middle School to progress.

"Our construction crews installed a volt pad mount transformer, which will serve the new classroom building," said Borden.

He added that the gymnasium and cafeteria will be served from an existing transformer station location and will be downsized from a 500 kVA to a 225 kV Pad mount transformer.

Utility crews will terminate the new customer-owned underground services when they are installed by the electrical contractor at a later date.

• Borden also reported on structure and equipment additions at the East Cleveland substation.

Engineering and Operations departments are working with Liedos Consulting Engineers to add a bus protection break with differential relaying.

This work will be performed in conjunction with a Tennessee Valley Authority project to install new distance relaying to protect the Bulk Electric System assets owned and maintained by TVA.

Presently, Cleveland Utilities' differential relay is protecting these assets and the zone of protection will be relocated to only protect CU power transformers and related bus. This will remove the local utility from a Bulk Electric System requirement and responsibility.

"This is a large responsibility, and should be completed by this coming fall," said Borden.

• CU crews have installed a 75 kVA pad-mounted transformer for electric service to the City of Cleveland's new Fire Station No. 6 on Westland Drive S.E.

This project is 230 feet of underground primary conductor and connected to a customer-owned temporary power pole for the construction of the new fire hall.

• Work is ongoing for maintenance and equipment upgrades at the Fletcher Subdivision.

Engineering is working to install a new Swietzer Engineering Laboratories Real Time Automation Controller (referred to as a RTAC) and removed a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition remote from service at the substation.

The new RETAC is required to extend distribution automation into the field. Fletcher and Mouse Creek Substation circuit will be the first to have the automation installed.

Mouse Creek substation is already equipped with the necessary equipment from a previous upgrade project. Additional work will include the replacement of station batteries, drying the Load Tap Changer, insulating oil and replacing sealing gaskets in both power transformers.

• Borden also reported on a couple of traffic lighting projects, on Keith and 17th St. N.W., and on the 25th Street corridor.

Traffic Signal Coordinator Tad Bacon has programmed eight ATC controllers and prepped eight Cisco Ethernet communication switches for installation along 25th Street from Peerless Road to the Spring Creek development, and also at the Peerless and Raider Drive intersection.

The existing Peek 3000E controllers will be removed and returned to stock.

The serial modems will be retired or used for parts at other intersections. All of the new equipment has been coded into the intelligent traffic IQ Central database and will provide more reliable clock synchronization and text alerts.

This upgrade was necessitated due to the numerous modem failures which resulted in the corridor getting out of coordination. Borden said the the new Ethernet communication is far more reliable.

Engineering has released a work order to install Wavetronix radar detection for the eastbound approach at Keith and 17th streets.

The work will add to the existing radar already installed north- and south-bound. The east and west bound approaches were also separated in the cabinet to phase four and phase eight.

Previously, the side-street approaches were both phase four, which limited the ability to provide unique programming.